In the 19th century Snake River sockeye runs exceeded 150,000 fish swimming to Wallowa, Payette and Salmon river basins where they would spawn around Wallowa Lake, Payette Lake, Redfish Lake and several other connected lakes in those basins.The run to Wallowa Lake was gone by 1905, the ever-dwindling runs to Payette Lake were forever shutdown by the construction of Black Canyon Dam on the Payette River near Emmett, Idaho in 1924. The Redfish Lake and nearby runs of sockeye were shutdown for 21 years by the construction of Sunbeam Dam on the upper Salmon River. This is the history of our interaction with these fish.

We know there were impressive runs of fish from various historical data, such as U.S. Fish Commission reports that mention the attempts to start a sockeye fishery on Redfish Lake in the 1880s when the run was thought to be 25,000 to 40,000 sockeye. We know that Hughes & Bodily and a man named Louis Fouchet operated a redfish fishery in the Payette Lake area from 1870 to 1876 and Fouchet returned to do the same from 1878-1880. We also know that in one year Hughes, Bodily and Fouchet caught 75,000 pounds of redfish (if sockeye that would be 37,500 dressed fish) that they packed in barrels with salt for sale to mining camps in the region. We know that they caught 7,000 sockeye in 1874. We know there were once substantial runs that are no longer around.

Historical abundance of sockeye runs in the Columbia/Snake are widely accepted to be about 3 million of the 10-16 million salmon and steelhead that returned each year before development. Today our Snake River sockeye are limited to the upper Salmon River in the Stanley basin. Sockeye were gone from Alturas Lake around the beginning of the 20th century. During a 10-year period from 1955-1965 the Idaho Department of Fish and Game got rid of the sockeye runs that went to Pettit, Stanley and Yellowbelly lakes. The sockeye that did make it back had Redfish Lake and by the late 1980s early 1990s that population crashed with only about 18 of the fish returning over the span of a decade.

We've had improving runs of sockeye to Redfish Lake since 2008, but we are far too cheerful about these results when you consider the historical abundance that once was, when you consider that there are five dams without fish ladders (Cascade, Black Canyon, Brownlee, Oxbow and Hells Canyon) standing in the way of ever recovering the Payette basin sockeye. This year 1,502 sockeye were counted crossing over Lower Granite Dam, the final and eighth dam anadromous fish must traverse to return to Idaho. Today we cheer that we are able to say that 1 percent of the number of sockeye that used to come back to Idaho waters have come back.

This is not a time for celebrations, this is not a time for slapping ourselves on the back. This is a time for real action, real solutions. The primary reason for the decline of Idaho's salmon is the four lower Snake River dams. Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite dams were built to subsidize transportation costs for agriculture at the known cost to Idaho's salmon, it's is past time to breach those dams and allow Idaho's salmon the free flowing rivers they deserve.

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Thank you for coming to my blog about restoring wild salmon and steelhead in the Snake River Basin. At times, I may write something that is either controversial or something you do not agree with (this being America and all). I welcome your comments. An engaging dialogue is healthy. However, before commenting, I do want you to remember that you sought this blog out. This blog did not come and get you and force you to read anything posted here. So in no way has this blog victimized you. That is only in your head. Knowing that, understand that I welcome your comments, but you are also in my house and as such a guest. Please conduct yourself in that manner. I will not tolerate insults, nor do I care to read about some new product you want to guerrilla market on my site. For those marketers out there who ask once every three weeks for me to blog about your products, this is not a business site. As this blog currently stands (not a business), I will not be writing any blogs about whatever exciting new product I have never heard of that you want plugged on my site. I pay a certain amount of money for this space on the internet and I share my thoughts, which I hope you enjoy and find thought provoking. Thank you again for reading, I really do hope something you read here is thought provoking. I also hope that you will join me in the hope that this will be the generation that saves wild salmon and steelhead in the Snake River Basin rather than the generation that watched as they passed into history.

Author

Michael Wells is an award winning journalist and photographer living in Idaho. He moved out west to insert himself in the salmon narrative, yeah, well the scenery is prettier than back east, too. He never had designs on writing about salmon for the rest of his life, so breach some dams already so he can get on with his life. He is a member of Trout Unlimited, Idaho Rivers United, Idaho Conservation League, Friends of the Clearwater, and Wilderness Watch. This blog also shares information from Friends of the Clearwater, Save Our Salmon and the Western Watersheds Project when the work they are doing coincides with the overall goal of this blog, which is to simply have mankind get out of the way enough for wild salmon and steelhead of the Snake River Basin to recover to the point of such an abundance that we no longer revere them. He can be reached at salmonblog AT yahoo DOT com.